WHY I WRITE, MK. III

It's not to speak 

my mind 

at all, 

but rather

to climb 

inside the language 

like a power suit, 

like chainmail—

to feel huge 

and yet invisible, 

buoyantly quixotic 

in a world 

full of windmills—

to feel utterly protected, 

secure in my belief 

in the feats 

of which it's capable—

and yet still, 

when I get 

near a poem's end,

to flail;

to panic, then 

go limp;

to let go 

and admit 

I don't know shit—and

even if I did, 

I surely 

haven't said it. 

R0

Something new is going around. 

It's been said 

(and now, so much

repeated) 

that the birds 

or insects started it.

Incongruous, 

unwelcome—

it doesn't care; 

it hops the line and 

pops up everywhere.

Tough luck, they say; 

no escape 

form this zombie. 

The best you can 

do is climb 

willingly inside it, 

surrender your head, 

fill your mouth 

with its replicants: 

"What's new?"

"How are you?" 

None can withstand it. 

And it's far too late 

to stop it (if you're 

reading this,

that's obvious). 

In all manners 

of speaking, the virus 

of utterance

 

has spread across the planet. 

THE PARTY IS MANDATORY

Whereas light 

is compelled 

to move at the speed of itself, 

to fill 

to the limit 

every room, every instance 

with de rigueur vitality 

before perception 

can catch up;

whereas tight 

gray-green leaves 

at the ends 

of hapless branches 

are bayonetted 

into being 

per the strictest regulations  

of the chlorophyll metabolism;

whereas even random 

chance itself has

got to be created 

on the back 

of the beck-and-call dime 

of compulsion:

so everything, it seems, 

is made—

not just 

caused—to happen. 

"In god we trust"

because 

we must. 

IDENTIKIT

Believe in yourself, 

they all used 

to tell me—

as if I 

was really 

a caped crusader, 

a crimefighter 

cloaked in a nom de guerre. 

They may have 

had a point there 

about the mask 

of duplicity, 

but some superhero 

I've turned out to be—

I can't even seem 

to bend 

even slightly 

the bars 

in the prison 

of this body. 

*

Trying to convince yourself 

there's no such thing as solidity 

is a lot like banging 

your head against a wall. 

Protons, 

electrons, 

gamma radiation—?

Referring to yourself 

in the first person 

suddenly just feels wrong. 

*

There's nothing pacific 

about the ocean, 

the way it 

keeps thrashing its wings 

against the sand. 

But who am I 

to envision a better way? 

Who am I 

to say 

how to bear—

to withstand?

Immeasurable 

reach 

needs

impossible hands.

ODE ON INERTIA

The way  

each heavy-

with-holy water droplet 

hits 

and resounds 

upon the surface of a pond 

like the infinite,

transient 

drone of a gong—as if, 

for always 

and ever, it was

the only one—

honest-to-god momentum 

looks a lot 

like its opposite.

But curious 

enough, we only know 

what's honest

by the way it leaves us

hanging on 

for so long 

after it's 

already gone. 

METEMPSYCHOSIS

In the infinite 

closet known as 

immateriality, 

it must be hard 

for a cold

little soul 

searching 

and searching 

in the desperate dark 

for the armholes 

in a garment 

called the heart

of a stranger. 

MAD RUSH

Ironically, it's just that 

pliant softness

and fragility 

of open petals 

that causes us, as we 

dash past, to grow 

anxious—

to clamp our mouths 

shut, stiffen 

up, and become 

what we fear most: those 

tense, insipid 

imitations of ourselves. 

It's as though, 

when confronted 

with such 

slow and deliberate 

forms of movement, 

our subconscious aches 

from its breakneck approach.

But instead of going limp, 

we go 

unbending

as we make haste 

for cover, since we feel

so exposed.